Throughout history, the vast majority of people around the globe have believed they have, however defined, a “soul.” While the question of whether the soul exists cannot be answered by science, what we can study are the causes and consequences of various beliefs about the soul and its prospects of surviving the death of the body. Why are soul and afterlife beliefs so common in human history? Are there adaptive advantages to assuming souls exist? Are there brain structures that have been shaped by environmental pressures that provide the foundation of body/mind dualism that is such a prominent feature of many religions? How do these beliefs shape the worldviews of different cultures and our collective lives? What is the role of competing afterlife beliefs in religion, science, politics, and war? This course explores several facets of this relatively unexplored but profoundly important aspect of human thought and behavior.
The course consists mainly of 70 to 80 minute lectures, typically broken up into 3 segments, recorded from a course offered by Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences. These videos include slides and some embedded video clips. Most lectures are accompanied by slides used during the lecture, also including recommended reading assignment which may provide additional opportunities to reflect on your studies.
Due to the lengthiness of this class and natural progression, the online course has been separated into 3 units, this is Unit 3.

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Prof. Daniel M. Ogilvie

Prof. Leonard W. Hamilton

Текст видео

When we are looking at the two problems that were up on the screen before, the AB510 versus the drinks in the bar, we don't think of them as consciously, problems that we're thinking about differently. We just look at them, we say oh, here's a logic problem and here's a logic problem. I'm going to try my best to answer this one, I'm going to try my best to answer that one. We don't think about them in terms of oh, this one's about cheating, I'm going to get this one. But that's, according to Cosmides, that's what we're doing. We're engaging, we're engaging our cheater detection system, and because this question is activating our desire to detect cheaters, we are able to better answer the question. And to better figure out how to properly solve it. So a lot of Cosmide's work builds on some of the work of Jerry Fodor, a philosopher here at Rutgers who actually vehemently disagrees with the evolutionary psychology approach. But Fodor made a very important contribution to the history of cognition and evolutionary psychology. And his big contribution was coming by and saying, most of the mind is small, and it's specialized modules, little compartments, little groups of information detecting systems of modules that feed information to the central executive area of the brain. Now many theories today will say that central executive area of the brain doesn't exist, but according to Fodor it did. The way Fodor explains it is, I'll use an example this is called the MĂźller-Lyer illusion, I imagine many of you have seen this illusion before. The question at hand here is, which line is longer? And if you've seen the question before, then you'll know that the lines are of the same length. But what I challenge to you is that if you've seen the question before. You'll still think that this one looks longer. That the one on the left, looks like it's a longer line, and it's a visual illusion because of the way the arrows are shaped around it. So [COUGH] because our visual processing system is sending us a signal. Sending us, our conscious decision-making system, a signal saying, these lines are of different length. And we've got something else in the brain that's overriding it and saying, this is a trick, they're really the same length. Doesn't change the fact that we still see them as different lengths. And so when it comes to conscious awareness, there are certain automatic systems inside the brain that we can't ignore. We can't see things not in color when they are in color in front of us. But if something's presented to me in black and white, I can imagine what the colors are, but I won't see it in color. But when something's presented to me in color, I can't choose not to see it in color because vision is a certain module that sends information to other parts of the brain for interpretation. And so the specialized systems of the brain send the whole package. They don't send all of the information. They just send the final conclusion. This line is longer than the other line. And then our conscious decision making process has to figure out and sort out that information. So now let's turn to the second part of the lecture. And that is to ask the question. If we want, if we want a psychology of religion, or a psychology of the soul that is meaningful. If we want to understand what it means mentally, what it means cognitively to be thinking of the soul, [COUGH] we need to understand the parts of the mind that are working on a day to day basis that are relevant to an understanding of the soul. And so I want to start this conversation by looking at categorization, which is a longstanding long known about part of psychology. Of cognitive psychology. We break the world into categories. We see the world as fitting natural categories. Some of this coming from experience and some through teaching. And so one very, very basic category is animate things versus inanimate things. Things that move on their own. Things that are alive versus things that don't move on their own. Obviously that distinction between moving on their own and alive is a sticky one, because we know that plants are alive but many of them don't move on their own or move so slowly that we don't see it. That makes it difficult for us to understand it. But we make these distinctions early on and we make assumptions based on the category, so in terms of animate things, we've got our mammals. We've got fish. We've got birds. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, and we know that we make certain assumptions about animate things. So something that is animate is something that moves on its own. Something that when it moves from point a to point b I'm not necessarily going to know the reason why it did that, and I will assume the reason why it did that is because it wanted to. So my dog ran across the room because the dog has some reason in running across the room. So the dog runs across because it thinks there's food there, because it thinks somebody's coming to the door, because it thinks there's a ball to fetch. All kinds of reasons. When the ball rolls across the room, it must be because something external to the ball is pushing it. So when a ball rolls across the room, it's because something knocked into it, it's because when whoever built the room constructed it, it was on a slant, there has to be some force that is moving an inanimate object, because inanimate objects don't move on their own. So those are automatic assumptions that we make based on putting something in a category. And recent work by Pascal Boyer, a cognitive psychologist and anthropologist over at Washington University in Saint Louis, talks about these as templates. He says they're basic, basic templates that develop early in life, that develop even before we know how to walk and speak, that we have as the natural ways of dividing the world. So a person is a very basic template. It's very important for a child to understand how people function. And it's very important for a child to know how inanimate objects function. Because the child knows that try as he might to get the attention from a teddy bear. The teddy bear is not going to do anything unless he picks it up. But he knows that crying is going to bring the mother or father or whoever's taking care of the child. So let's say, so these templates are very basic. So I make automatic assumptions about how a person's going to behave. My automatic assumptions about a person, a person grows, a person is capable of dying, a person moves on its on accord, a person has other children, a person eats food, things like that. So lets say I tell you about an item that I've never heard of before. I tell you that Zygoons are the only predators of hyenas. Okay? No other animal, or nothing else is a predator of hyenas except for zygoons. So you now have made the automatic assumption. I'm sorry for the slip of the tongue. And Pascal Boyer writes about, uses this example. He says, well, you've just made an assumption about zygoons. And you can tell me all kinds of things about zygoons based on the one piece of information that I said. They are a predator of hyenas. because you made an assumption that zygoons are animals and therefore, even though you've never heard of a zygoon before, to you, a Zygoon is something that grows and dies, because that's what animals do. It's something that needs food for survival, it's something that gives birth to other Zygoons, and it's something that eats hyenas, as I told you. And so, our templates enable quick interaction with the world. They enable us through our automatic assumption to function in a world of unknowns because any time I encounter something that I've never seen before, I make automatic assumptions about it and I know if I automatically assume it's an animate being, I need to be a little bit more careful than if it's an inanimate object. So let's just talk about how this works as an inference system. The sentence is, zygoons eat hyenas. The property that I've told you explicitly is that a zygoon is a carnivore because it eats hyenas and that's what this sentence refers to. I make an inference that a zygoon is an animal. I make an assumption or an inference that establishes zygoon in the category animal. I make this assumption. I make this inference, and this inference system is we can call it one type of these mental processes that we were talking about. A module that enables me to interact. So my module is the inference system. I make inferences. I make assumptions based on information that's out there, and I attach something to a category. Now, some people may have heard the phrase what happens to you when you assume the old joke, well you make an ASS out of U and ME. Right? People say don't assume, don't make assumptions, that's not a good thing to do. Well, yeah, in certain context that's right, but that's really only what happens when you make an assumption, and you're wrong. And much of our cognitive development comes from making assumptions that were successful. And why is it useful to us to make assumptions that are successful? Because it makes us process information more quickly. And processing information more quickly, reduces the cognitive load. It makes us require fewer calories, which is good for survival. It makes us make decisions faster, which, if you're being chased by an animal, or looking for a meal, the speed at which you make decisions is extremely important. And so as much of psychology has decided the process of making decisions quickly, of making assumptions, sometimes we call them horistics, has been valuable to our species even though it's wrong 5%, 10% of the time. Because we make assumptions that ease our survival, that enable our survival and they make us more efficient. And the amount of time that they're wrong is not enough to hurt our survival. And the speed that it gains is worth the error that comes along with it. So categorization gives us this ability to move quickly, to make quick assumptions, to have that kind of efficiency that is adaptive in the hunting environment for one example, and many other environments. So when I read about a zygoon, I am automatically making assumptions without being told. I'm automatically inferring that a zygoon is an animal. I'm bringing to bear my default inferences, my default inferences that apply to all animals. That it gives birth to it's own kind that it grows and dies, unless I encounter any information to the contrary. Now there are exceptions, there are exceptions, not everything fits perfectly into a category. So, one example is the tomato, which has some properties of vegetables and some properties of fruit. One example is the duck-billed platypus, which spends much of its time in the water, has the bill of a duck, which makes us think it's a bird, but it's actually a mammal. So we're not so tied down to our expectations that they can't be corrected, but there are things that don't always fit into the categories, and we have the cognitive flexibility to allow for that. [COUGH] Now, the approach of categorization in an evolutionary context says that we have built in, or automatic categories for things that we usually come into contact with. So we make automatic assumptions more fluidly about things that would fit our evolutionary needs. So we don't have a category for animals that are brown, because brown isn't really a useful categorization to us. It's more important to know if an animal is a carnivore or an herbivore. Because it's more important to know if this animal is going to be dinner or if I should be running. And so we have to consider the usefulness of a certain category in terms of the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. So at this point in the lecture I ask for a volunteer and since I don't really have one here, I'm going to do what the volunteer would do myself. And this is, I'm going to show you a video. And this is a video that won't be automatically apparent to why it's relevant, but once we go through it, it will be. This is a well-known video going back to the 1940s by researchers by the name of Hyder and Simmel, and they showed this video to participants and asked people to narrate what is going on in this video? So I'm going to narrate to you, what I think is going on in this video, and your opinion might be the same, it might be different, but I think you'll understand where I'm getting at. So, in this video, right know all I know is I've got a triangle sitting in this box. Now, suddenly, a circle and another triangle roll down. And the larger object is having some kind of interaction with the smaller objects. There's some hesitation and now suddenly the larger object-- the large triangle's getting aggressive. He's attacking the smaller triangle, while that little circle is hiding off in the corner. And the little triangles may be being a little antagonistic. And now the larger triangle has him cornered. He has him cornered and he's attacking him, he's puncturing him, he's going after him. And the little triangle is running away and the circle is hiding and the larger triangle is trying to figure out what to do and now he's got the circle cornered. He's got the circle cornered inside the box. He's going to go and close the box to keep the circle trapped. The little triangle is hanging out on the side here. And the circle is trying to figure out what to do. He starts some evasive maneuvers, he tries to get away, and the large triangle is coming in on the attack, and the little circle sneaks out of the large triangle and the two prey shapes start to celebrate as they have escaped the large triangle. And you'll see them run away and now the large triangle is angry. He's so angry he starts to break the box. There we go, breaks the box. So that's the video. Again, it's a well known psychological finding from back in the 40s. So now how is something like this relevant? This becomes relative when we talk about agency. Agency might be an unfamiliar term to you. You might have many other associations with it. You might think of an ad agency, or a job agency, or a temp agency. You might think of a sports agent. That's not what we're talking about when we talk about agency. Agency is the notion, the way the terminology is used in cognition and anthropology and psychology is, the notion of having the ability to act on one's own. You might think about how that's relevant to an agent, right? A sports agent is somebody who's acting on behalf of the sports player. So agency is the ability that we have to act as self-driven beings. And in the video, I'm making these inferences. You might have made similar inferences about the movement of those shapes. Those inferences are caused by the movement. If we saw those shapes rolling or bouncing in obvious and repeated trajectories, we wouldn't be attributing agency to them. Because people who can decide what to do on their own don't do the same thing over and over again. They speed up and slow down and choose to do some things and choose to not to do other things. So agency describes the source of movement. And when we see something moving in non-linear or non-repetitive ways, we say that thing that is moving, that is moving based on internal motivations, based on an internal source. And we make this fundamental distinction early on in life between things that decide to move and things that are moved by other things. And again, you can imagine the obvious importance of knowing that, right? I need to know in order to predict. I need to predict my environment so that I can capture things that I want to eat so that I don't get killed. So let's look at agency in inanimate objects, as we saw with the circle and the triangle. We can attribute agency to inanimate objects. And this is a bit of an obscure study. It's very relevant to understanding the supernatural. But this is an experiment where we have two screens set up where you can't see what's behind them. And the participant in the experiment is a child of approximately age two. And the experimenter rolls a ball and the ball rolls behind the screen, but you don't actually see it in the space between the screens. So it rolls out in one side and out the other without being seen in the middle. Children are very surprised. And we have paradigms for measuring how children are surprised. I don't have time to go into that now. But if the experimenter takes a person and does exactly the same thing, person walks behind screen one and out of screen two without walking in the middle, children aren't surprised. Two year olds aren't surprised. Why wouldn't they be surprised? Well, children seem to have this appreciation of adults as these magical creatures. They appear whenever you cry for them. They're constantly leaving and coming back and doing all these unpredictable things. And it's clear to children that adults are moving on their own and doing these certain things, but a ball does not move on its own. A ball does not have the ability to defy the rules that have been laid down for it. And so we don't naturally attribute agency to inanimate objects, but once they start to move in a way that is agentive or agentic, then suddenly we do start to attribute agency. And this is where the soul comes in. Because agency is something that's extremely important. We need to know what other people are going to do. We need to know if I don't share the game that I just hunted with my neighbor, how is he going to respond? Can I bully him and think that he'll just take it and won't respond, or is he going to try and get me back? And if he's going to try and get me back, it might not be worth it. Or if I sneak left is the prey going to go right? Or can I trick the prey based on how it's going to respond to the situation? So I need to be aware of agency. I need to have theories of the internal motivations that are pushing other agents. But I also can't see it. I can't see someone's agency. I can't see that thing inside of you that makes you decide to go left as opposed to going right. I can't see that thing inside of you that makes you get angry when something happens, whether it makes you get sad or happy. But I know it exists, because I know it exists in myself and I feel it. I feel my agency. I know that it's there. I know that something inside of me is pushing me to make decisions. And therefore, when the concept of soul comes along and says, oh, that agency? That thing that you've known about for millennia? That thing that is so clear to you that is the source of people moving in one direction or another? That's the soul. We've got a name for it. We can identify it. We know it exists. This is where we get into memes. I don't know if those have come up at all in the course. Richard Dawkins, before he decided that his goal in his work was to prove that religion is untrue, was and still is an eminent biologist. And in the 70s, he coined this term called a meme, which is becoming much more popular in the technology world. And a meme is, he tries to build it off the concept of a gene, but an idea that is found independently in many cases because it's useful. So the explanation of a meme according to Dawkins says, if you come up with a term or phraseology that brings usefulness of people's lives, is a good way of describing things, you're likely to see that in many cultures. You're likely to see many cultures have words for their hands, but might not have words for other similar parts of their body. They might not have words for the right side of their back versus the left side of their back. But they will have words for one hand and not another, because the hands are much more useful than other things. So if there's an idea that comes out there that's really useful to a number of people, it's likely to be reproduced in many cultures. And so because agency is so central to our existence, it's not surprising then that attempts to describe it would arise in many different cultures and that the concept of a soul would emerge independently in many different cultures. Now, I know this is sounding like a historical hypothesis. I'm not offering up an explanation of historically where the soul came from. I'm arguing for why it's useful, for why it's important. It's important because it makes a very useful description of something that we make use of a lot.